Raman spectroscopy has been used to investigate the structure of coal tar pitch heat-treated up to 3000℃ by using 514.5 run Ar ion laser line. Four critical temperature ranges were found on pyrolyzing coal tar pitch, which correspond to four distinct processes from disordered carbons to the well-ordered graphite structure. The range of heat treat temperature (HTT) below 1000℃ corresponds to gas evolution during the pyrolysis of coal tar pitch. Above the HTT are correlated to rearrangements of enlarged molecules, growth of the molecules along the direction of plane, finally stacking in the normal direction of the plane, in the respective HTT ranges of 1000-2000, above 2000 and 2500-3000℃.

Open clusters are useful tools to investigate the structure and evolution of the Galactic disk. We have started a long-term project to obtain UBVI CCD photometry of open clusters which were little studied before, using the Doyak 1.8 m telescope of Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory in Korea. The primary goals of this project are (1) to make a catalog of UBVI photometry of open clusters, (2) to make an atlas of open clusters, and (3) to survey and monitor variable stars in open clusters. Here we describe this project and report the first results based on preliminary analysis of the data on four open clusters in the survey sample: Be 14, Cr 74, Biu 9, and NGC 2355. Isochrone fitting of the color-magnitude diagrams of the clusters shows that all of them are intermediate age to old (0.3-1.6 Gyrs) open clusters with moderate metallicity.

Two-component models (normal star and degenerate star components) are the simplest realization of clusters with a mass spectrum because the high mass stars quickly evolve off leaving degenerate stars behind, while low mass stars survive for a long time as main-sequence stars. In the present study we examine the post-collapse evolution of globular clusters using two-component Fokker-Planck models that include three-body binary heating. We confirm that a simple parameter є ≡ (Etot/trh)/(Ec/trc) well describes the occurrence of gravothermal oscillations of two-component clusters. Also, we find that the degree of instability depends on the steepness of the mass function such that clusters with a steeper mass function are less exposed to instability.